Is your audience merely numbers on a screen? As a creator, building a loyal community where fans can interact and support each other can be hard. But what if there was a platform designed to recreate that close-knit experience?
Introducing Uscreen– an all-in-one video membership platform designed for creators.
It not only hosts and manages your videos but also lets you seamlessly livestream, build a thriving community, and effortlessly implement digital fitness and wellness studios! It gives your fans a space to connect, discuss, and feel like they’re part of something bigger.
After thoroughly using and testing it out for a while, I’m here with a comprehensive Uscreen Review. We’ll begin by exploring its UI and key features. Moving on, we’ll talk about its roadmap, pricing plans, support options, and major pros and cons.
Ready to ditch the impersonal comments section and build a dedicated audience that can’t get enough of your content? Let’s dive right in!
- About Uscreen
- How is Uscreen Different from Online Course Creators?
- Uscreen User Interface
- Key Features of Uscreen
- Uscreen Additional Features
- Who Should Use Uscreen?
- Uscreen Customer Reviews
- Uscreen Memberships Examples
- Uscreen Changelog
- Uscreen Pricing
- Uscreen Customer Support
- Uscreen Pros
- Uscreen Cons
- Why Should You Trust Me?
- Conclusion
- Uscreen FAQs
Uscreen Review
Summary
Uscreen is a feature-rich platform that offers video hosting, live streaming, community building & mobile apps. Its expensive price ($149/month) and limited free trial make it less desirable for beginners. But the value it brings for established businesses is worth every penny! Overall, great for established creators, but not budget-friendly for beginners.
Disclaimer : I strongly believe in transparency. If you buy using the links on our site, we may earn a small commission without any extra cost to you. This helps me to keep producing honest reviews. Read More >>
About Uscreen
Uscreen is an all-rounder membership platform founded by PJ Taei in 2015. It packs multiple powerful features to help video creators grow their business. As of now, it has helped 25k+ creators succeed and has a whopping 9.2 million users on the platform!
It has secured ratings of 4.8 on G2, and 4.7 on Capterra and TrustPilot by hundreds of satisfied customers.
Besides hosting and managing your videos, it lets you live stream, monetize your content, build a community, and offer your audience a seamless viewing experience. But that’s not all. You can offer all of it via your own branded mobile and TV apps, just like the OTT platform Netflix!
The USP of Uscreen is its seamless streaming platform, its engaging membership community, and its implementation as a digital fitness and wellness studio. Whether you’re a yoga instructor, a gym trainer, a YouTuber, or an educator, Uscreen can help you scale your business.
How is Uscreen Different from Online Course Creators?
At first glance, you may confuse Uscreen with online course creator platforms like Teachable, Kajabi, or Udemy. However, there is a major difference between the two.
On Teachable and Kajabi, you sell an online course on a subscription or one-off pricing. The course comprises multiple content formats, like videos, text, quizzes, etc, and has to be viewed in chronological order. These platforms are restricted to online learning.
Whereas, on Uscreen, you sell access to your video content and community. The videos can be viewed in any order and aren’t restricted to merely educational content. You’ll find videos around entertainment, health, productivity, and more on Uscreen.
The primary difference lies in its community interactions. On Uscreen, you get exceptional features for building a passionate user base. The community members can interact with you and other members, share their opinions, and offer helpful feedback on your content.
Uscreen User Interface
The user interface of Uscreen looks pretty modern and pleasing. As you log in to your account, the left panel displays all the important features arranged neatly. On the top, you get a quick search button to find any feature you need.
From the top right corner, you can easily manage your profile and account settings. The bottom right corner holds the chat support you can use to converse with their customer support team. Overall, the interface looks neat, organized, and friendly for beginners.
Key Features of Uscreen
1) Video Hosting and CMS
All your uploaded videos are hosted on Uscreen by default. So, you don’t need to get a separate video hosting platform to host your videos. However, you cannot customize your hosting settings from the Uscreen interface.
Uscreen also doubles up as an integrated video management platform. So you can adjust the video settings before publishing them. Multiple videos can be uploaded from your device via drag and drop or using Dropbox.
For each video, you can add a title and description, arrange them into categories, add custom filters, tags, SEO details, and thumbnails, create collections (similar to YouTube playlists), and add extra resources like images, PDFs, etc.
Additionally, you can also add a trailer video, upload captions and subtitles, and specify the access, visibility, and subscription plan for your video. I was pretty impressed with the wide range of settings available for my video content.
2) Video Playback
Uscreen is equipped with an HTML 5 video player, which works across all devices, loads quickly, and can be customized according to your brand requirements. It supports full HD videos and lets you adjust video speed, display captions, and enable auto-play.
The most striking feature of Uscreen’s video playback is its Netflix-style video delivery. While watching a video, users can check out suggested videos and collections right below it. They can mark videos as favorites, add them to calendars, and share them on social media.
They have also introduced a ‘One Stream at a Time’ policy, just like OTT giants Disney+ and Netflix! Thus, multiple users can log in to an account but only one person can stream the video at a time. This is a great way to protect your content.
Uscreen’s video playback is seamless and efficient, which is great for enhancing user engagement. It allows users to discover new and trending content on your account and even create their own playlists.
3) Live Streaming
Another interesting feature of Uscreen is its live-streaming capabilities. You no longer need to switch to Zoom, YouTube, or Google Meet to conduct your yoga class or art workshop. It comes built within the Uscreen platform!
A live stream is easy to set up and share with your community. All you need to do is enter your live stream name and description, SEO tags, trailer video, etc, just like your regular videos. But on a live stream, you can also enable:
- Pre-registration: Specify the date and time of your live stream to allow members to register before it.
- Player Options: Here, you can enable live chat, donations, and rewind options for your members.
- RTMP: If you plan to stream on a different platform, copy the Stream URL and Stream Key under the RTMP section.
Finally, once all the changes are made, you can enter the Live Studio to check out the look and feel of your live stream. I wish they also had an option to add a background animation or countdown screen before the stream started.
Overall, the live video streaming service may help you boost your audience engagement, and ultimately, revenue!
4) Content Calendar
If you are more of a planner, you can schedule your videos or live streams in advance on the Content Calendar. All you need to do is click on the “Add Video” button and select any of your uploaded videos. It’ll automatically be added to the calendar.
This will help you stay more organized and offer streamlined content to your audience. The community members, in turn, can refer to the calendar to stay updated about the upcoming videos.
5) Website Customization
If you want to change the appearance of your membership website, you can visit the ‘Website’ tab. By default, you get the Home page (with your videos sorted by categories) and the About page (with your bio and contact details).
You can customize the following elements on your Uscreen website.
- Branding: Specify your website name, brand logo, color, favicon, and color scheme (light or dark).
- Navigation: Add relevant links to your site’s header and footer.
- Video Catalog: Set a featured category for videos, select playlist position, etc.
- Advanced: Enter website SEO details, domain URL, and website language.
These are pretty limited options for customizing your video membership website. You can check out the Landing Page Creator under Marketing tools for some unique website templates. (Discussed below!)
6) Mobile and TV Apps
Watching videos on a website can be quite inconvenient. What if you had a branded app built exclusively for viewing your content? Uscreen makes this possible with its white-labeled apps. As of now, they have launched 3.5k+ mobile apps!
The mobile apps of Uscreen are well-designed and highly responsive. Members can seamlessly binge your videos and live streams, view your content calendar for upcoming videos, add comments, and interact with fellow community members by creating new posts, etc.
You can even send out mobile push notifications with personalized text to hook your viewers. But that’s not all. If you prefer a better viewing experience, Uscreen also offers TV apps for all popular platforms like Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.
The pricing for branded mobile apps starts at an expensive range of $299/month.
7) Built-in Community
One of the most important features of Uscreen is its Built-in Community. It comes with a range of tools to help you keep your community members engaged. For instance, users can leave comments under videos and take part in live chat during ongoing live streams.
They can create community posts and integrate uploaded videos or custom videos, images, GIFs, and polls within them! It even offers an AI tool for generating engaging posts.
Overall, the community features of Uscreen are excellent. If you have a budding community of users that you wish to foster, this is a great platform!
8) Subscriptions and Monetization
It’s easy to create a new subscription plan on Uscreen. All you need to do is specify the title and description of your plan and set an image. Next, you can set a price and availability for your course along with a billing period. (monthly, quarterly, 6-monthly, or annually)
You can also specify a trial period in days. The users won’t be charged for the trial period. Talking about video monetization, Uscreen offers PayPal and Stripe payment gateways. You can link your accounts to receive payments made by subscribers.
9) Marketing Tools
Whether it’s generating leads, nurturing your audience, or winning back subscribers, Uscreen has an array of marketing tools for you!
For instance, if you want to generate more leads, you can check out their Landing Page Creator. It offers a library of 12 landing pages you can customize to your liking. They also feature block templates for sections like Hero Banner, Testimonials, CTA, FAQs, Pricing, etc.
This is how you can create a beautiful landing page for your membership site. Check out these membership site examples for some inspiration!
You can also create coupons to offer exciting discounts to your subscribers or to attract new members. Discounts can be offered in a fixed amount or by percentage. You can select the plans and duration of your coupon and specify redemption limits.
For instance, you can set a coupon expiry date or limit the number of users that can redeem the coupon. Similarly, Uscreen offers multiple other tools like YouTube Lead Generator, Giveaway Funnels, Push Notifications, and more.
10) Video Analytics and Reports
Uscreen lets you view Financial, Subscriber, and Content analytics in a graphical format. Under Financial Analytics, you can view the gross revenue and sort it by product type, origin, and duration.
The Subscriber analytics shows graphs for new, current, or previously paying subscribers. You can also view graphs for YouTube Lead Generator, Churn Rate, and Cancellation Surveys.
Under Content Analytics, you can view graphical representations for watch time, views, videos, devices, etc. Additionally, the Sales tab features detailed reports for invoices, annual sales, monthly sales, and coupons.
11) Security Features
With Uscreen, you get three powerful security features.
- Geo Blocking: You can enable geo-blocking to restrict your videos from being accessible in a specific country.
- Private Access: You can mark videos as ‘Gated Access’, so only subscribed members can access them.
- Disable Downloads: For premium content, you can disable downloads and prevent users from exporting your videos.
These features are good for security. However, Uscreen lacks the two-factor authentication feature for security-focused users. I hope they implement 2FA in the future. The DRM encryption feature is currently under development and will be launched soon.
Uscreen Additional Features
Besides the ones mentioned above, Uscreen also features the following extra tools to enhance the platform’s functionality.
- Integrations: Uscreen offers integrations with popular third-party tools like Zapier, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, Google Analytics, Twitter, Hotjar, etc.
- Email Templates: You get 20 pre-designed email templates to customize all kinds of transactional emails to send to your users.
- User Fields: You can create custom fields to collect any additional information from your customers.
Who Should Use Uscreen?
Uscreen is ideal for creators with a large community of users who are looking to consistently monetize their content and build lasting relationships with their users. A video and community-centric platform like Uscreen can boost engagement and content discovery quickly!
Its primary use cases include video streaming, forming membership communities, and digital fitness and wellness studios.
- Video Streaming: Media companies, broadcasters, non-profit organizations, production companies, and creators in the education or fitness niche can use Uscreen to offer seamless streaming of their video content.
- Membership Community: YouTubers, content creators, social media influencers, and media businesses can build thriving and focused membership communities of their audience base.
- Digital Fitness and Welness Studio: Yoga trainers, fitness instructors, coaches, dieticians, nutritionists, etc can offer focused content to their viewers and also organize live sessions to resolve queries and engage with the community.
Check out these case studies of successful creators for more information. Uscreen is a little expensive, though. This is why it’s best for users with no budget restrictions.
Uscreen Customer Reviews
Uscreen has received a customer rating of 4.8 on G2, a popular website for user reviews of software and services. Following are some of the key pros and cons as stated by Uscreen customers.
Customers love the ease of use, support, features, and overall experience offered by Uscreen. However, they observe limitations on features, customizations, analytics, and, integration issues as some drawbacks that need to be addressed.
For more information, you can check out Uscreen’s G2 Reviews page.
Uscreen Memberships Examples
Looking for some inspiration? Well, check out these successful examples of memberships built on Uscreen over the years.
1) Abundance Plus
Abundance Plus is a streaming platform created by Justin Rhodes. It’s focused on sustainable living. Previously, Justin had a WordPress website where he used to manage his community with WordPress plugins. However, this setup was hard and lacked proper streaming experience.
With Uscreen, Justin was easily able to migrate this membership platform and double his revenue within a year! He was able to create a seamless video platform with native apps and functional community tools. He now has a thriving community of 7.7k+ members and a $1 million+ annual revenue!
2) Studio Bloom
Studio Bloom is a fitness membership platform founded by Brooke Cates. It focuses on pre and postnatal fitness programs designed for women. Initially, they tried to manage their huge content library on platforms like Vimeo OTT and Intelivideo, but it was pretty difficult.
Once they switched to Uscreen, they were able to create categorized collections and offer a friendly UI. This helped them streamline their member access and build a loyal community through community forums.
Since their migration, Studio Bloom has launched 6 mobile and TV apps and boosted their revenue to $1 million+ annually!
Apart from these, there are various other successful Uscreen memberships like Find What Feels Good, Filmmakers Academy, AOJ+, Good Morning Good Life with Amy Landino, Art For Kids Hub, etc.
Uscreen Changelog
Uscreen’s Changelog can be viewed from the top-right corner of the dashboard. Here, you can view the recent updates made on the platform. For instance, in the last month, they streamlined community posts and introduced calendar push notification templates.
Some notable updates made in the last few months are automatic caption generators, video chapters, Giphy integration, etc. If you have any suggestions, you can share them too. I admire the pace at which Uscreen is developing and constantly upgrading its platform.
Uscreen Pricing
Uscreen features two paid plans on monthly and annual subscriptions. The following table contrasts the features of its annual plans.
Growth Plan | Pro Plan | |
Annual Pricing | $149/mo | $499/mo |
Live Streaming | 1 hour | 10 hours |
Community Access | No | Yes |
Mobile App | No | Yes |
Video Storage | 100 hours | 150 hours |
Admin Users | 1 | 3 |
3rd Party Integrations | No | Yes |
The Growth Plan of Uscreen features 100 hours of video storage with 1 hour of live streaming. It is priced at $149/month, which translates to $1788 when purchased on an annual subscription.
To most users, this may sound expensive. However, the value and return on investment (ROI) it offers compensates for its elevated pricing. It enables creators to generate a stable and recurring revenue with their content. It’s interesting to note that Uscreen creators generate $150 million in annual revenue!
Free Trial
Uscreen offers a 14-day free trial requiring no card details. Here, you can upload, manage, and sell your video content on a subscription or one-time pricing. However, it doesn’t allow access to all the major features, like live streaming, community, content calendar, and mobile apps.
Refund Policy
Unfortunately, Uscreen doesn’t offer any partial refunds once you subscribe to a paid plan. If you want to get a test run, you can use their free trial before upgrading to the paid one.
Payment Methods
Uscreen supports multiple payment methods, including Credit Cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Cash App Pay, iDEAL, Sofort, SEPA, Stripe Link, and Giropay.
Uscreen Customer Support
Uscreen offers customer support via their knowledge base and chat support. The knowledge base comprises 500+ articles with annotations and images covering all popular topics.
Their live chat support has an AI bot for resolving minor queries. But their support staff takes a few hours to reply to your submitted queries. Additionally, Uscreen also has a Resource Center where you will find relevant articles and content to help you grow your video business.
If you already have a user base on a different platform, Uscreen also offers migration and onboarding support. Your content and community is seamlessly transferred from platforms like Kajabi, Vimeo OTT, etc to Uscreen.
But that’s not all! Uscreen goes a step further and extends its support to end users as well. So, your community members can also get their queries resolved with their customer support team. Overall, the customer support of Uscreen is admirable.
Uscreen Pros
1) Built-In Video Hosting and CMS
You don’t need to avail a separate video hosting solution or CMS for your videos. All of it is covered under Uscreen’s subscription. You also get a Uscreen sub-domain that can be replaced with a custom domain if required.
2) Exceptional Community Features
Uscreen offers a range of tools to build and nourish your community. Members can interact with each other by creating new posts, leaving comments, and asking for opinions via polls. They can also engage with creators via comments and live chat during live streams.
3) Seamless Video Streaming
The videos you upload on Uscreen are placed in a catalog design to stimulate binge-watching, just like Netflix. Viewers can find related videos, new releases, and additional resources right below a video, so they never run out of content!
4) Branded Apps
You can create branded apps for your mobile devices and even for TV. Uscreen supports all popular platforms for your TV apps, so you can conveniently watch your favorite creators on the big screen.
5) Impressive Marketing Tools
Uscreen is equipped with some really interesting marketing tools, like coupons, landing page creator, YouTube lead generator, giveaway funnels, push notifications, and more. These are great for generating more leads and nurturing them properly.
6) Good Landing Page Creator
It has a handy landing page generator comprising 12 pre-designed membership site templates. The templates are highly customizable. You can edit the colors and content, and also insert block templates for sections like CTA, FAQs, Hero Banner, Pricing, Testimonials, etc.
7) Lots of Integrations
You can integrate with popular third-party applications like Zapier, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar, etc to extend your platform’s functionality.
8) Great Knowledge Base
The knowledge base of Uscreen comprises 500+ annotated articles spanning all the important topics. This is helpful for beginners to get started with Uscreen with no difficulties.
Uscreen Cons
1) Limited Free Trial
The 14-day free trial offered by Uscreen is pretty limited. It doesn’t give you access to Community, Calendar, and Apps. All of these are important factors to test before making such an expensive investment.
2) No Live Streaming Templates
While starting a live stream on Uscreen, you don’t get any intro or outro templates, countdowns, animated backgrounds, etc to keep the viewers engaged. I hope they introduce them in the future.
3) Cannot Bulk Edit Videos
You can edit a video’s settings separately. But publishing/unpublishing and editing in bulk is not possible at the moment.
4) No Video Quality Options
The video player doesn’t allow users who set a video quality to save data usage. It also doesn’t allow higher video resolutions like 4k.
5) Missing Security Features
Uscreen doesn’t offer essential features like 2FA for secure logins. The DRM encryption feature for protecting your video content from unauthorized use is currently under development.
6) No Subscriber Progress Tracking
Uscreen doesn’t offer any features for tracking the progress of your subscribers. For instance, you cannot create quizzes and assessments to judge their learning. You also cannot issue them certificates after completing a specific number of videos.
Why Should You Trust Me?
I have been working in the digital industry since 2015. In the last few years, I’ve used and tested hundreds of digital tools. These include web hosting, cloud storage, password managers, website builders, online course platforms, and more.
I have worked with popular online course platforms like Thinkific, Teachable, Graphy, etc, which helped me better understand the features and offerings of Uscreen. Testing out so many digital & AI tools has given me the knowledge and experience to suggest the right one for your needs.
Conclusion
Uscreen comes across as a feature-rich platform. It excels at hosting and managing your videos, live streaming, engaging with the community, and creating beautiful landing pages. It also provides a seamless user experience with powerful mobile and TV apps.
However, the limited free trial restricts them from experiencing Uscreen’s core functionalities before they commit. It also lacks essential features like bulk video editing, higher video resolutions, and security options like 2FA and DRM (under development).
Its subscription plans start from $149/month, placing it out of reach for many creators, especially beginners and those with a limited budget. But the value and returns it provides make it worth investing in. It is ideal for established creators with a large and loyal audience base.
I hope you found this Uscreen Review helpful in understanding if it’s the right choice for you. You can also avail of its 14-day free trial to get a test run before committing. Have you used any video membership platforms before? Do share your experiences in the comments below.
This is Kripesh signing off. Cheers, and keep learning. 🙂
Uscreen FAQs
1) Does Uscreen have a free plan or free trial?
Uscreen doesn’t have a free plan. But it features a 14-day free trial with limited access so you can test it out.
2) What is the refund policy of Uscreen?
Uscreen doesn’t offer refunds on subscriptions. You can opt for the free trial before purchasing a plan.
3) What payment methods does Uscreen support?
Uscreen supports the following payment methods: Credit Cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Cash App Pay, iDEAL, Sofort, SEPA, Stripe Link, and Giropay.
4) What features of Uscreen make it stand out?
The USP of Uscreen is its excellent community features, branded apps for mobile and TV, and a Netflix-like video streaming experience.
5) Can you use your own domain with Uscreen?
Yes, you can use your custom domain on the paid plans of Uscreen.
6) Is Uscreen suitable for beginners?
Unfortunately, Uscreen is too expensive for beginners. It is better for established creators with a substantial user base.
7) Can you offer subscriptions on Uscreen?
Yes, you can offer monthly, quarterly, 6-monthly, and annual subscriptions on Uscreen.
Uscreen Pros (+)
- Video Hosting and CMS
- Community Features
- Video Streaming
- Landing Page Creator
- Lots of Integrations
Uscreen Cons (-)
- Limited Free Trial
- No Live Streaming Templates
- No Video Quality Options